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Then Cash, who is never quiet, goes quiet. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. We were just gonna—” He doesn’t finish it. He claps Theo on the arm. Theo’s already turning. Wyatt looks at me on the way past, and there’s no drawl in it this time, just a long steady look, like he’s leaving a door propped open behind his eyes in case I want it later. None of them say a word to Beau. Theo’s hand lands on his shoulder going by and stays a second too long.

Then the stairs take them, and a door shuts somewhere above us, and it’s the two of us and my coat and the bags.

Beau sets his practice bag down slow. Like the floor might be wired.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

“I’m moving out.” I keep my hands folded. “Today. My things are packed. I wanted to do this in person. You deserve that much.”

He doesn’t say anything. He’s just looking at me.

“It isn’t working,” I say. “Us. This. And the kind thing is to stop it now, before it gets any further in, while it’s still⁠—”

“Sloane.”

“—still a thing we can both walk out of clean. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m walking out clean. It’s for the best.”

“It’s for the best.” Flat. Not a question. He’s heard the phrase before. Everyone’s heard the phrase before. “Okay. No. Back up. This morning you stole my coffee and told me my comp lit professor has a punchable face. Six hours ago. What happened in six hours?”

“Nothing happened. That’s the point. Nothing has to happen. I had three good months and I’m getting out while they’re still good.”

“Of what?” His jaw works. “Getting out of what? Of me?”

“Of this.” I don’t gesture. Gesturing is for people who need their hands to sell a thing. “Before it’s the kind of thing that takes years to climb out of.”

“Okay.” He puts his hands up. Not surrender. The way you gentle something that might bolt. “Then talk to me like I’m on your side. Because I am. Whatever this is — you need room, you need me to back all the way off, you need to not live here — tell me the actual thing. I’ll fix it. I’m good at fixing things. Tell me what it is.”

“You can’t fix this.”

“You don’t know that. You haven’t let me try.”

“It isn’t a leak in the roof, Beau.” Flat. The flatter I keep it the more it holds. “You can’t order a part. The broken thing is me. From the foundation up. There’s no version of you good enough with your hands to fix a foundation, and you’d spend years finding that out, and I’d let you, because I’m selfish, and that is exactly why I’m not going to.”

He’s quiet for a moment. He’s looking at me like he’s trying to find the seam.

We are two centers lined up on the dot, both of us waiting for someone else to make the first move, both of us too disciplined to false-start. I have spent almost four months in cold arenas learning the particular stillness that comes right before a puck drops — the held breath, the weight already shifted forward onto the blades, everyone pretending this is about to be fair. It isn't fair. It's never fair. Whoever wants it more loses something to get it, and I have already decided which one of us that's going to be tonight.

“Sloane.” He says my name like it's the whistle. Like the second he says it, something is supposed to start.

I don't move. I have gotten good, this year, at not being the one who moves first.

“My father is in a holding cell in Pennsylvania,” I say, because the silence is dangerous and the script is safe. “He put a woman through a wall on Thursday. A woman I didn’t know existed. My mother lives in a state four thousand miles away and signs her cards like we met once at a conference. My family is a thing I changed my legal name to escape. That’s what I come from. That’s the line. That’s what’s in the blood.”

“I know all that.” His voice is low. “You told me. On the drive. I know all of it.”

“You know it like a story someone told you in a warm truck. You don’t know it like a thing that lands on you in your own house at two in the morning for the rest of your life.” I refold my hands the other way. “You’ve got a mother who cried when I left. A father with a lake and a name on the mailbox. Two sisters who already planned my next visit. People who love you on purpose, who chose it. I’ve got wreckage and a holding cell and a clock. And I am not going to stand in your warm house and let it spread into your life and ruin the best thing you have going, just because I was selfish enough to want it for a season. You deserve someone who isn’t this. That’s not me being hard on myself. That’s just true.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” Quiet. “What ruins my life. Who I deserve. That’s mine.”

“Somebody has to decide it clearly. You won’t. You’re too far in it. So I’m deciding it for both of us, and the only genuinely good thing I have to give you is the door.”

He takes a step closer. I make myself not step back.

“You’re really good at this,” he says. Not mean. Almost wondering. “You’ve got every piece stacked. I can’t get a hand in anywhere.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“You’re telling me a truth. Stacked so neat there’s no gap to grab.” Another step. “And I’m not going to argue the stack, because you’ll win. You’ve been winning arguments like this since before you could spell. You told me where you learned it.”